1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electrical connector, and more particularly to, a small size connector in which a large-diameter wire is directly clamped by a small size terminal while maintaining the size of the connector without using a butt joint for a small-diameter wire and the large-diameter wire.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In general, a prescribed size of wire is applied to terminals of an electrical connector and a plurality of terminal accommodating cavities corresponding to the size of the terminals are provided in a connector housing. The terminals having a prescribed size and the wires to which the terminals are applied are hereinafter referred to as first terminals and first wires, respectively.
When a small-size connector is provided with terminal accommodating cavities at intervals of 2.5 mm or 3.0 mm, the cross section of the first wire used for the terminal is small, usually 0.3 mm or 0.5 mm, so that when a large-diameter wire is needed to reduce electrical resistance in an electrical circuit or to maintain safety, a butt joint has been used as shown in FIG. 6. That is, a first wire b is first clamped with a conductor clamping portion a1 and a insulator clamping portion a2 of a first terminal and then the first wire is connected to a large-diameter (2 mm) wire b' with a butt joint c. This results from the fact that the first terminal a with the clamped large-diameter wire can not be accommodated in the cavities due to the relation in size between the terminal accommodating cavities and the first terminal a.
In the above conventional method for connecting a large-diameter wire with the butt joint c, not only additional work for assembling the joint inevitable, but also an additional joint portion is regarded as an unstable portion, resulting in decreased reliability of the electrical circuit.